OPINION — On January 1, 2026, in his planned first message for the 59th World Day of Peace, Pope Leo XIV will reflect on peace, justice, and global harmony.
On December 18, 2025, Pope Leo published his first major peace message themed “Peace be with you,” in preparation for his and the Catholic Church’s annual January 1st exhortation on World Peace. Pope Leo’s December message urged the faithful to not surrender to the idea that fear and darkness are normal, but to see peace as not only possible but necessary. “When we treat peace as a distant ideal, we cease to be scandalized when it is denied, or even when war is waged in its name… and to justify violence and armed struggle in the name of religion.” Pope Leo called on believers of all religions to guard against the temptation to weaponize words and religion to commit violence in its name. He ended with two searing eyewitness accounts of European horrors: the Bosnian war and the domestic terrorism that tormented Italy in the 1970s and 1980s.
The World Day of Peace is an annual Catholic observance celebrated each January 1. Established in 1968 by Pope Paul VI, it is an opportunity for each pope to write a peace message and to reflect on peace, justice, and global harmony. The messages offer moral guidance to the Church and the world on how to pursue peace in a contemporary context.
For his first message for the 59th World of Peace, Pope Leo chose the theme “Peace be with you” as a call not only to desire peace, but to make it a lived reality. Indeed, peace is not just the absence of war, but rooted in justice, trust, dialogue, forgiveness, and shared humanity.
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Seeking peace in a world in disarray
The annual Preventive Priorities Survey, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the more than six hundred American foreign policy experts who contributed to the survey, was just published and viewed five conflict-related scenarios as highly likely to emerge or escalate and to have high impact on U.S. interests in 2026.
The experts were most concerned about conflict-related risks in the Middle East and eastern Europe, including the potential for increased clashes between Israeli security forces and Palestinians in the West Bank, renewed fighting in the Gaza Strip, and intensified attacks in the Russia-Ukraine war. Also, the possibility of direct U.S. military strikes in Venezuela and of an increase in political violence and popular unrest in the United States are similarly worrying scenarios.
Renewed armed conflict between Iran and Israel, artificial intelligence-enabled cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure and a cross-strait crisis between China and Taiwan are concerning. And North Korea was elevated to a Tier 1 concern for 2026 – a top-priority global threat due to its nuclear weapons, ballistic missile programs and potential to destabilize Northeast Asia.
“The world continues to grow more violent and disorderly. Last year’s unprecedented level of anxiety among experts about the rising risk of conflict remains undiminished, according to the director of the CFR survey.
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Pope Leo, the first American pope, has an opportunity to put words into action, in the pursuit of peace. Since his election in May 2025, “peace be with you all” has been the foundation for his peace mission. In October 2025, at an interreligious meeting in Rome, Pope Leo declared: “Peace is holy, not war”, urging religious leaders to act as “mothers” who encourage people to treat each other as family. And in December 2025 during a trip to Lebanon he met with Muslim and Druze leaders, stating that authentic unity and friendship are the only ways to “put aside the arms of war.”
Pope Leo could and should convene a meeting of interreligious leaders to draft a strategy to bring peace to a troubled world. This, obviously, would be a monumental task, seemingly beyond the reach of any person, nation, alliance, and religion. But a leader that has the respect of peers and the public could be the catalyst for such a “peace movement.”
Pope Leo has my vote.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times
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